Post-Birthday Report

I got the best birthday present EVER yesterday! The exact camera I really, really, REALLY wanted turned up in the mail yesterday, a present from Lynn!

It's a Canon PowerShot A1100IS 12.1 MP Digital Camera with 4x Optical Image Stabilized Zoom and 2.5-inch LCD!

Lynn really hit the jackpot on this one. It's an excellent camera! It takes AA batteries, which makes it just a smidge bigger than I'd like, but means that if the batteries in it die and I don't have any recharged batteries with me, I can get batteries for it anywhere. Pretty much every 7-11 or gas station I've ever been in has them! It also has a real viewfinder, which most digital cameras don't seem to have these days, and I find a viewfinder much better for action. It has a longer zoom than most small cameras, and the zoom is very easy to get to the precise point you want it to be.

Well, I immediately put batteries in it, and attached the hand strap, and called Lynn to thank her. She was out getting groceries (I learned from her voice mail), so I went straight out to play with my new toy, which is why I missed her return call.

Here's the pond behind the building I live in from the covered bridge:

When I got to the other side of the bridge, I took this one of the bridge, itself:

And here are some of the buildings on my side of the pond (taken from the other side):

You're probably getting tired of seeing the same place over and over again, but the wading bird that lives back there didn't show up. I was disappointed in that, but it seems to have a sixth sense, and never shows up when I have an actual camera with me. Either that, or I walk right up to it without noticing that it's there, scare it half to death, and it flies away before I have a chance to pull out my camera.

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Since yesterday, I've discovered that some other well known people have the same birthday I do, notably Julie Newmar and Bjo Trimble! Oooops! When I looked up Bjo, it turns out her birthday is the day before mine. On Facebook, it looked like it was on the 16th, but no, it's actually on the 15th. Still, there are a lot of people born in August!

I loved Julie Newmar in Oblivion! If you haven't seen it, and liked Tim Curry in Rocky Horror Picture Show, check it out. Musetta Vander plays a female version of him, but with a whip in this movie!

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I got my newest copy of Knit Picks catalog in the mail yesterday, and they not only have a new cashmere blend yarn, they also have brand new colors in so many of their existing yarns! I've been drooling all over the catalog ever since it arrived! My special favorite at the moment is the double knit weight in City Tweed. I've been wanting to try it for a while, and I'm going to have to break down and get some soon.

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It looks like Tuesday has turned into the good night to watch TV! There are new episodes of Warehouse 13, White Collar, Covert Affairs and Memphis Beat on tonight. Enjoy it while you can, because most of the summer shows will finish their seasons this or next week.

Last night, I got a fabulous birthday present in the form of an episode of The Big Bang Theory! 

Years ago, as a tech illustrator, I worked on a project for an aviation toilet. There I was in a room with about eight guys, all working on illustrations and maintenance diagrams, etc., of a toilet for a new military plane.

There were spaces of five to ten minutes of silence, interspersed with jokes about what we were working on. First of all, I wouldn't have thought the topic could be so genuinely funny, and I never would have believed that it could continue to be funny for more than two hours straight, but it was! This particular sentiment was echoed by Sheldon in last night's episode, where they try to fix a design flaw in a toilet for a space station.

The Big Bang Theory is always up there among the top 10 shows I've ever seen for how funny it is, but last night's episode was a gem! It has to be seen to be believed!

I've got to go or I'll never get this post up! Have a great evening and enjoy all the terrific shows while you can!

Apres Holliday Miscelleny

I hope everyone out there had a great Independence Day, and holiday weekend!

Holly and I went out on Saturday and had our usual good time. A little bit of yarn shopping (I got enough Red Heart Heart & Sole yarn to make 3 pair of socks in Faded Denim), the usual visit to WalMart for stock-up shopping, and then on to dinner at Ruby Tuesday where we had food that was so good I stuffed myself.

Here's a photo of the sock yarn. I'm taking a break from my other project and making at least one sock with this to see what it looks like.

The best part of the trip was the company and conversation. Holly and I have so much fun together!

On the fourth, I stayed home and watched TV most of the day, plus fireworks in the evening. I turned on the Capital Fourth on TV. I can't really see the fireworks on the Mall from here, but they came in sharp and clear with a great view on TV. And they backed it up with the 1812 Overture (complete with cannon) followed by lots of John Philip Sousa! While I was listening to the TV, I was watching the fireworks out the window. I could see the high displays from seven different shows. If the trees behind the apartment office hadn't grown about 20 feet in the last four years, I could've seen at least two more.

And yesterday, I got a call to do another playing board for the group of iPad games I've been doing the art for!

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I was also looking at stuff I want on Amazon, and looked around for a better price on a camera I've been looking at. I discovered to my surprise that the one I liked, (Canon Powershot A1100IS) has been discontinued by the manufacturer. So, if you're looking for a good point-and-shoot camera, this is a perfect time to buy this one! Most of the stores still have them in stock, but they know that they can't get any more and some stores will put them on clearance. When I was in WalMart, they had one on clearance for $119, but probably most WalMarts don't have them anymore.

This is the camera that Crazy Aunt Purl chose. She goes on about how bad she is at taking picutres, but she did OK two cameras ago. The last camera she had just didn't take good pictures, no matter how much anybody tried. But she loves this one, and can't seem to take a bad photo with it. The link shows what she thinks of the camera.

One of the nice things about it is that it has a viewfinder. When trying to take action shots, it's much easier for me to use a viewfinder. Not to mention that my sunglasses are polarized, so they black out the LED image and I have to take them off to take a photo. Which is a good way to miss lots of photos, and get more sun exposure for my retinas.

I haven't tried taking close ups with this particular camera, but I've seen photos that others have taken (see CAPs link), and this would be a good camera if you want something to take photos of tiny things to sell on ebay, Craig's List, Etsy or anywhere on the internet. It's also a good carry-around camera.

I always try to have one really good camera, and one that is small enough that I can carry it around everywhere. The really good camera takes fabulous pictures, but to be really good, it has to be bigger, so I never have it with me when I see something unexpectedly.

I have a tiny, tiny camera to carry around, but the rechargeable battery is dying. I'll have to get another battery soon, but I can get a whole new camera for about the same price. This camera isn't the smallest ever, but it's small enough that I'm willing to carry it. And it uses 2 AA batteries, so if you run out of batteries or have them die unexpectedly, there's always a drug store or gas station that has new batteries! I usually recharge mine, but it's a good safety net.

So, anyway, I got sucked into ebay. A few people are trying to sell them for somewhere between $150 and $200, but that seems excessive to me. I only bid $40 on the first one, and they seem to be going for more than that. I lost the bid on the second one, and now am bidding on a third one, which is blue like the one shown above, and I love that.

So, wish me good luck!

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There's currently a Warehouse 13 marathon on SyFy, which will end with the season premiere tonight! I can't wait!

I'm still waiting for the cables to connect my new TiVo, so it won't be recorded on the new TiVo (maybe later in the week), but on my old DVR, which will be gone soon. The TiVo people shipped out my new DVR without any cables! They sent them out on Friday, but they don't seem to have arrived yet.

This seems to be one of the first new shows of the summer season, but there will be more right away. Just in time for my new TiVo! I'll keep you up to date on what's coming up.

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I have gone off the deep end and changed my business to an LLC, so the bank made me close the old account and open a new one.

Which meant that I needed new checks, and since I don't have the right size checkbook cover, one of those, too,

While I was ordering the checkbook cover, I got one for my own checkbook. It's called shining stars, and that describes it perfectly.

I also felt it was the perfect checkbook cover for me!

Then I saw another one that I might love even more. This is the one I got for the business. It's called Celebrate Space. Both covers are from Bradford Exchange.

The business checks I got to go inside have four different sky photos, and I just love them! Here's a sample check:

The others a different, but similar. I think it looks businessy, but different and really cool. It makes me want to start writing checks!

Unfortunately, this is the real world, and they said it will take about two weeks to get the checks and checkbook covers. I suspect that the covers will actually take less time. I'm really jazzed!

I've also found some really neat stuff to sell, and I'm working on a website to sell it on. Some of my patterns will be converted to PDF format because I've had a lot of people asking about that. Wait until you see what I'll be featuring on my website!

I'll keep you all up to date about what's available! Whatever happens, it's going to be an adventure!

Have fun with Warehouse 13 tonight!

Day at the Dentist's Office

Yesterday, I had to get up at 7 am (that's really early in the morning for me!) to get myself ready in enough time to catch the bus and get to the dentist's office at 10!

I wanted enough time to get a chance to eat something because I didn't think I'd want to eat later, and I was right about that.

The plan was for me to get a broken cap replaced, and get a new cap for a badly damaged tooth. Since the teeth were next to each other, and they weren't sure how well the new cap would do because the tooth was so badly damaged, the plan was to get one cap of two teeth stuck together (no space to floss in between).

Things started off pretty well. They gave me the Novocaine and then did an impression of all my teeth. When I got the cap that's now broken, it took something like ten to twenty minutes to do the impression, but this time they did it in under a minute. I thought this was real progress, but it has it's down side.

The next step was to remove the broken cap, which was almost like trying to remove a real tooth. It took a lot of drilling to weaken the cap, and then a lot of force. There was very real violence involved!

Then we moved on to cutting down the other tooth that had already broken and been repaired and then had a bad cavity added to the mix. That went pretty smoothly.

Then we came to the part that was a real problem for me, which was taking an impression of the base of the two teeth that we planned to make new caps for.

They took the impression. But they weren't happy with it, so they added more of the impression material and did it again. And again. And again. And again.

The problem with this is that they were just adding more material to the original impression, coupled with the fact that the impression material seems to shrink a bit as it cures. I'm sure that it doesn't really shrink a lot, but it was enough, since this was an impression of all my teeth, including the back ones that each time he redid it, it was harder to get it back on. Each time they redid it, he had to use more muscle to get it back on. And once it was on, it felt like it was bending all the bones in my face and head. It hurt! It really hurt!

After the third or fourth time they did it, it pulled the cap off my other front tooth. The dentist tried to replace it, but broke it in the process. So, they had to do an impression of the base of that tooth, too.

So, I'm left with the fading taste/smell of: rubber gloves, the impression material, Novocaine, burned teeth (from the drilling), blood and other assorted dental tastes/smells. I thought some of it might be on my hands or face, but no amount of washing/brushing would get rid of it last night. It's starting to fade today. Plus, there are still small pieces of the impression material that I'm fishing out of my mouth and trying to scrape off the inside of my upper lip, etc, and the skin on the inside of my lip seems to be blistered and is partly peeling off.

My whole head, and especially my face, hurt last night from the distortion that was imposed by the impression material. There was and still is a sharp pain in my nose for no reason I can think of unless there was a hairline crack in the area between my front teeth and nose. The whole area that had Novocaine in it still hurts, as it always does for a few days after something like this. The temporary caps are probably a tiny fraction of an inch larger than the previous caps/tooth, so they're pressing against the teeth in both directions, which hurts a bit. And, of course, they had to drill my tooth below the gumline, so the gum is all torn up, and the whole general area has swollen. None of this is major pain, but it's enough to make me feel yucky. I know from past experience that it will be worth it, though.

So, I have temporary caps on three of my front teeth, and instructions not to bite into anything "unless you want your teeth to be all chippy before we can replace them."

In three weeks, I'll go back and they'll remove the temporary caps, fill a cavity next to one of the caps, give me the finished caps, and I'll have time for it all to heal before Thanksgiving!

I had three caps put in almost thirty years ago, and I do know that all this hassle/pain will be worth it. Once it's done, it'll be almost like having my own, real teeth. I can hardly wait!

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Holly and Robin are on their Halloween vacation already. Unless they met with delays at the airport, they should be in New Orleans by now.

Holly called me last night. She's angry at K-Mart. She ordered a camera from them with expedited shipping. They guaranteed absolutely that she would have the camera delivered yesterday. As of yesterday, they hadn't even shipped it! She swears that she will never buy anything from K-Mart ever again! I don't really blame her. So, now she has to spend part of her vacation looking for a nice camera to buy. You would think that in this economy, a store like K-Mart wouldn't want to blow a sale.

So, for any of you planning your Christmas shopping, keep this in mind.

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Eastwick will be on again tonight! I can't wait! The electronic TV Guide on my DVR says that they plan to burn a witch for Halloween! I sincerely hope they plan to do it in effigy! Whatever, it should be good!

I really hope you got to see the Halloween episode of Castle on Monday! It was too much fun!

Have a great evening!

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Addition:

I nearly forgot!

Trick or Treat!